The stranger in the pub who had just hugged me had tears in his eyes.
Not many people, he was saying, can understand how hard it has been to be a loyal fan of Canada’s national soccer team. The eye-rolling, the mockery, the smug, condescending grins and shakes of the head have been inescapable. He looked at me, searchingly, wondering if I could relate. And he saw that I could.
Canada had just defeated Venezuela in the quarter-finals of the Copa America, a moment my new buddy and I had awaited faithfully for two generations and that set up something that still seems beyond imagination—a July 9 semi-final against reigning Copa America and World Cup champions, Argentina.
That puts Canada, as legendary Argentine-American sportscaster Andres Cantor put it, “into the mouth of the wolf.”
Win, lose, or bow out on penalty kicks now, Canada’s men’s soccer team, much to the chagrin of Copa America’s failed American hosts, is back.
The last time our men played in a knockout stage of a major international competition was at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. We lost to Brazil on penalty kicks.
The players on that team were almost all products of the North American Soccer League—the continent’s first serious effort to plant the professional game in the USA. Having featured global superstars such as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, and Giorgio Chinaglia, it was in its death throes then.
Which meant that a year later, when Canada beat Honduras to qualify for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, most of its players were struggling to make a living.
At the time, I was the sports editor of the Calgary Sun and wrote about how strange it was that one of the world’s greatest players, George Best of Northern Ireland, had never played in a World Cup and yet the guy who scored the winner to get Canada into Mundial 86, George Pakos, was about to. Mr. Pakos was a 33-year-old amateur who worked as a water meter technician for the City of Victoria.
His team, coached by Tony Waiters, performed admirably, losing only on a late goal to the European champions, France, in its first game before bowing out with consecutive 2–0 defeats to Hungary and a powerful Soviet Union side.
There were efforts after that to build the game but without a stable professional league, players struggled to find employment and that golden 1980s generation spawned by the NASL faded into the mists of time.
The founding of Major League Soccer, the USA hosting of the 1994 World Cup, and the rise of the women’s game kept air in the sport’s tires. Our men’s team had some famous moments, such as its 1994 1–1 tie with Brazil in front of 52,000 fans at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium, its heart-breaking elimination from the 1998 World Cup qualifiers on penalty kicks to Australia, its victory in the 2000 Gold Cup with wins over Colombia and Mexico, and another tie with Brazil at the Confederations Cup at year later in Japan.
And then, everything fell off a cliff.
Oh, the country continued to produce good players. Goalkeeper Craig Forrest, forward Tomas Radzinski, and defender Paul Staltieri made it to the game’s zenith, the English Premier League. Alex Bunbury had a great career in Portugal while others, like Paul Peschisolido, thrived in England’s second tier. But the national program ran out of organization, money, and inspiration. Players like Calgary’s Owen Hargreaves and Scarborough’s Jonathan de Guzman shunned Canada to play for England and Holland respectively.
Every time there was hope of advancement to a World Cup, everything just seemed to fall apart. Until this new generation, with new belief, emerged.
It was a long road back. Only three years ago, the team under coach John Herdman had just survived thousands of kilometres of travel for games against small Caribbean countries, a winner-take-all match with Suriname and an exhausting home-and-away series with Haiti to rejoin the region’s powerhouse nations such as the USA and Mexico for the final round of World Cup competition.
There, that new generation began to shine: the team went on a heater of six straight wins including over Mexico and the USA, won the qualifications and, for the first time since 1986, participated in a World Cup—Qatar 2022.
This time there were no water meter technicians in the squad. Instead, Canada had players like Edmonton’s Alphonso Davies, who had won championships with Bayern Munich, Ottawa’s Jonathan David, a leading scorer in France’s Ligue 1, and a veteran with UEFA Champions League experience such as Brampton’s Atiba Hutchinson of Besiktas
The TV ratings were huge, but they were bounced, pointless. The team got embroiled in labour disputes, Herdman moved on to the MLS, and Canada only qualified for Copa America with a tight repechage victory over Trinidad and Tobago.
In the past month, guided by a new coach, Jesse Marsch, the magic has returned. It won’t all be rainbows and unicorns over the next couple of years as Canada prepares to host, along with the USA and Mexico, the 2026 World Cup.
But no one’s going to look at my new friend with the same, condescending look ever again. Because today, thanks to a new golden generation, the team he and I have always believed in—even when it hurt like hell—stands in the mouth of the wolf.
